Ged Carroll

Category: telecoms | 電信 | 통신 | テレコム

I thought about telecoms as a way to talk about communications networks that were not wireless. These networks could be traditional POTS (plain old telecoms systems), packet switched networks including ethernet or some hybrid of the two.

I started my agency career working during the dot com era. What was happening in the broader technology space was one wave of technology cresting, while another one rose.

In the cresting space was:

Enterprise software (supply chain software, financial systems, database software, middleware software tools).

NIC cards (network interface cards, a way of getting your computer to be able to communicate with an ethernet network. It was a little circuit board that connected on to the mother board and allowed.

Mainframe and  mini-computers. It was around about this time that company owned data centres peaked.

In the rising wave was:

Servers –

  1. Unix servers and workstation grade computers were what hosted the first generation of websites. Names that did particularly well were Sun Microsystems (now part of Oracle) and Silicon Graphics Inc. (SGI). Sun Microsystems ran everything from investment banking models to telecoms billing systems. It’s hardware and software made great web servers. SGI was facing a crisis in its core market of 3D modelling due to Moore’s Law, but its operating systems was still very powerful. They managed to get some work as servers because people had them around in creative agencies.
  2. You also had a new range of servers on the low end. A mix of new suppliers like Cobalt Networks and VA Linux, together with existing companies like Dell who were offering Linux and Windows web servers that were really repackaged local area network file servers.

Enterprise information management software. The web posted its own problems for content management and publishing and companies like Captiva and Open Text rushed in to plug the gap.

Traditional vendors like HP and IBM rushed into provide a mix of software and hardware based solutions including e-business by IBM, which morphed into ‘Smarter Planet’

Telecoms companies – two things happened.

  1. Phone services were deregulated opening up former state owned incumbents to competition in fixed line and mobile telephony
  2. Data services really started to take off. Multinational companies like Shell looked to have a global data network for routing their calls over, so in many respects they looked like their own telecoms company. Then those data networks started to become of interest to the nascent internet providers as well. Mobile data started to gain traction around about the time of the dot com bust

So it made sense that I started to think about telecoms in a wide but wired sense, as it even impacts wireless as a backhaul infrastructure. Whether this is wi-fi into your home router or a 5G wireless network connecting to a fibre optic core network.

  • FaceID

    @ WWDC

    Apple’s facial recognition aka FaceID has spurred a number of discussions about the privacy trade-offs in the iPhone X.

    Experts Weigh Pros, Cons of FaceID Authentication in iPhone X | Dark Reading – One concern about FaceID is in its current implementation, only one face can be used per device, says Pepijn Bruienne, senior R&D engineer at Duo Security. TouchID lets users register up to five fingerprints. If a third party obtains a user’s fingerprint and reproduces it, and the user is aware, they could register a different unique fingerprint.

    Can Cops Force You to Unlock Your Phone With Your Face? | The Atlantic – Even if Face ID is advanced enough to keep pranksters out, many wondered Tuesday if it would actually make it easier for police to get in. Could officers force someone they’ve arrested to look into their phone to unlock it?

    How Secure Is The iPhone X’s FaceID? Here’s What We Know | Wired – Marc Rogers, a security researcher at Cloudflare who was one of the first to demonstrate spoofing a fake fingerprint to defeat TouchID. Rogers says he has no doubt that he—or at least someone—will crack FaceID. In an interview ahead of Apple’s FaceID announcement, Rogers suggested that 3-D printing a target victim’s head and showing it to their phone might be all it takes. “The moment someone can reproduce your face in a way that can be played back to the computer, you’ve got a problem,” Roger says. “I’d love to start by 3-D-printing my own head and seeing if I can use that to unlock it.” 

    Now lets talk about the Apple Watch, which I consider to present more serious issues.
     
    The Apple Watch 3 is interesting from a legislative point-of-view. The software SIM in the Apple Watch clones the number of your iPhone. The security services of the major powers generally don’t broadcast their capabilities. Politicians are generally untroubled by knowledge of what is possible. Giving politicians an inkling is likely to result in broad sweeping authoritarian power. 
    Imagine what will happen when Amber Rudd goes into parliament looking for real-time access to everyone’s phones. She now can point to the Apple Watch 3 as evidence that LTE and 3G connections can be cloned. What kind of legislation will her special advisers start cooking up then?

    Secondly, it will only be a matter of time before criminals either work out how to do it themselves, or co-opt mobile carrier staff. Two factor authentication that depends on SMS is already compromised. This allows it to be compromised and undetectable.

    The Apple Watch 3 may have royally screwed us all.

  • Apple retail special Event outtakes

    Key takeouts from the Apple special event with a little bit of analysis on Apple Retail.
     
    Apple Retail
    First presentation by Angela Ahrendts. There is a question of why she hadn’t presented at previous keynotes.  My read on it is that that the revenue per square foot metric beloved of retail analysts will tumble. Apple seems to be taking the mall companies idea of shopping as entertainment and doing it for their individual stores.
    Town hall – what they call the stores internally, bigger focus on engagement rather than transactions – is this an effort to try and recapture cool?
    Store features
      • Plaza – public private spaces outside the store if possible, interesting implications on future store placements – probably less in malls
      • Forum – open plan internal space
      • Boardroom – private space focused on developer relations, was probably the most interesting push. Stores are being given a stronger push as embassies for developer relations. 
      • Creative Pro – Apple genius for the creative apps, probable mix of amateur and professional audiences addressed
      • Today at Apple – driven by Creative Pro staff to focus on creating more usuage of key offerings i.e. photo walks – think Nike Running Club. Also includes teacher outreach
      • Genius grove – the genius bar but with plants presumably to try and break up the overall store noise
    • Avenues  – wider aisles that products are on
    Continued retail expansion in the US including Chicago – interesting that international expansion wasn’t mentioned. 
     
    Apple Watch
      • 50% yearly growth – the series 2 fixed many of the hygiene factors wrong with the first version
    • 97% customer satisfaction – health seems to be driving this
    Health features: focus on heart rate monitor and getting proactive about flagging elevated heart rate. Also focusing on heart rhythm changes as well.
     
    watchOS 4 out September 19 available to all customers. Interesting that they didn’t drill into some of interesting features on watchOS 4 using Siri
     
    Series 3 Apple Watch with cellular built in. Your Dick Tracy fantasies are alive. Apple thinks that people will leave their phones at home and bring their Apple Watch. They also see it as killing the iPod Nano with wireless music playback. I am yet to be convinced.
    Apple added a barometric sensor; usage example was focused on health and fitness rather then locative apps. Not a great surprise given that these sensors have been in premium G-Shocks for a good while. 
     
    Apple used specially designed lower power wifi and Bluetooth silicon. But no news about who is making the cellular modem. The SIM is embedded on the motherboard and presumably a software update? These changes could have interesting implications for future phones?
     
    Interesting carrier partnerships, in particular all three of China’s mobile carriers, but only EE in the UK?
     
    Apple TV
     
      • Apple TV now supports 4K, unsurprising hardware upgrade and includes high dynamic range – Apple is following the TV set industry’s lead
      • More interesting is the amount of content deals Apple has done with studios, in particular keeping the price point of 4K HDR content the same as was previously charged for HD content.
      • Interesting TV partnerships but no major UK TV stations only Mubi
      • Emphasis on easy access to sports on the Apple TV would wind up cable companies further
    • Apple TV was also positioned as the control interface for HomeKit smarthome products. There was no further  update on HomeKit in the presentation 
    iPhone 8 incremental changes
     
      • Wireless charging with glass back. The steel and copper reinforcement of the glass is probably to help with the induction charging
    • Incremental improvements in picture quality. Bigger focus on AR including new sensors.
    iPhone X
     
      • Positioned as future direction for iPhones. Biometric face ID is clever but has issues. I wonder how it will work with facial hair or weight gain – Apple claims that it will adapt. Apple also claims to be able to detect photos and masks. It’s also used for face tracking in AR applications with some SnapChat lens demos.
      • As with Touch ID, there is a PIN code if your face doesn’t work. I have found that Touch ID doesn’t work all the time so you need that PIN back up.
      • The notch at the top poses some UX / design issues and the industrial design implies case free usage which will be a step away from usual iPhone usage.
    • What isn’t immediately apparent to me is the user case for the iPhone X versus the iPhone 8 plus?
    What was lacking in the iPhone presentation was a celebration of all in the changes in iOS 11 under the hood.
    A11 – Bionic chip in the iPhone 8 and X
      • Includes new integrated GPU for machine learning and graphics. This explains why Imagination Technologies are in trouble
    • New image sensor processingThe A11 processor has a hardware neural network on the chip for the iPhone X – unsure if its also usable on the 8
    Apple’s moves to embrace, co-opt Qi wireless charging and build a super-standard on top of it will likely wind up members like Qualcomm and Huawei. How much of this is down to user experience and how much is down to the desire to get Apple IP in the technology stack?
    Apple is left with a large product line of iPhones: SE, 6 series, 7 series, 8 series and the X

  • Qualcomms new chipset + more things

    Qualcomms new chipset allows cars to communicate with each other | SiliconAngle – Qualcomms new chipset shows an ambition that isn’t written in stone. Qualcomm has a serious partnership problem and the auto industry should consider carefully before letting them inside their supply chain. More on Qualcomm here

    Tech companies spend more on R&D than any other companies in the U.S. – Recode – not particularly surprising in a world of shareholder value, whether that money well spent is another topic

    If Unilever Can’t Make Feel-Good Capitalism Work, Who Can? – Bloomberg – good if uncritical view of Unilever

    America needs its unions more than ever – Interesting op-ed by Larry Summers. Never thought I would see this argued by him

    Google is losing allies across the political spectrum | Ars Technica – not terribly surprising

    Huawei to unveil new smartphone with AI-powered chipset ‘Kirin 970’ | South China Morning Post – interesting more for the design choices Huawei has to make. It needed something that would work with Google’s Android and the Chinese home-brew distribution. Imagine trust and cloud services influenced it. Finally networks just aren’t as ubiquitous as we’d like either

    There is only one winner when start-ups advertise on Facebook | Business | The Times & The Sunday Times – every day at Jam Jar, our angel investing fund that backs UK entrepreneurs, we sit through pitch after pitch, for every conceivable type of start-up, from dog food to posh watches, and everyone — and I do mean literally everyone — is selling their equity and raising millions and millions of pounds seemingly for one reason — to pay for ads on Facebook. It is a phenomenon so consistent across the companies we see, the money being raised is so big and the faith in the strategy so absolute, that at the end of every pitch, we are always left with the same conclusion: we should just buy shares in Facebook

    How to handle an HireVue interview with an investment bank – “There are over 15,000 traits that can be used to identify top performers,” says Clark. These include your choice of language, the breadth of your vocabulary, your eye movements, the speed of your delivery, the level of stress in your voice, your ability to retain information, your ‘valence’ (emotion), and 14,993 others. With a HireVue interview, it’s not just about running through your work history and academic achievements, or using the S.T.A.R. technique to answer questions. It’s about your delivery, and what’s going on beneath the surface.

    Three’s Smarty: Pants or Tops, Dude? – Three UK launches a low cost MVNO – how low can it go?

  • Jawbone + more news

    Jawbone

    Jaw-bone-d: Wearables biz Jawbone shuts down | The Register – pretty sad end for Jawbone. Jawbone was the wearables company that pioneered noise cancelling Bluetooth headsets. I had the good fortune to go on a work trip to San Francisco. While there I picked up an early Jawbone headset. At the time it was a retail exclusive with AT&T Mobile and weren’t available outside of the US. With the rise of Apple’s AirPods, surely this should have been Jawbone’s time to own BlueTooth headsets if it had been able to keep going and innovating?

    Business

    Chat app Kakao raises $437M for its Korean ride-hailing service | TechCrunch

    The Japanese Company Betting Billions to Prepare for the Singularity | Wired – I think that Softbank have overreached on the vision here

    Cision IPO – Great guns for brand situational awareness | Forrester – but it needs to do a better job with its brand and PR people

    Consumer behaviour

    Hong Kong women spend over HK$4,000 on beauty products | Marketing Interactive – I guess it depends on how you define beauty products

    Staring down internet trolls: My disturbing cat and mouse game – unremittingly grim

    Economics

    North Sea becomes burden on taxpayers | Business | The Times & The Sunday Times – this is down to lower oil prices and tax relief against investment (predominantly decommissioning platforms) which will accelerate over the coming years. This will squeeze the UK government hard in the face of Brexit

    FMCG

    发现新大陆 – amazing marketing for McDonalds’ spicy chicken wings

    How (FMCG) markets grow | Kantar World Panel – interesting read

    Gadgets

    Nokia Branded Phones to Get Zeiss Branded Cameras | Fortune.com – Nokia’s handset business getting the gang back together

    Nokia, Xiaomi sign patent sharing agreement | ZDNet – Nokia and Xiaomi will work together on optical communications solutions for data centers, IP Routing for the Nokia FP4 processor, and a data center fabric solution

    Alibaba Challenges Google, Amazon With New Echo-Like Device – Bloomberg – Interesting that they are using the Tmall brand rather than TaoBao

    Amazon Launches Customized Kindles With China Mobile | China Tech News – interesting deal with China Mobile. Jailbroken Kindles have been going around in China for years

    Media

    It’s the end of an era: Channel 18 cancels international format that served generations of L.A. immigrants – LA Times – a sad indictment of media economics

    Chinese site Weibo to ban ‘bad talk’ about Chinese affairs – CNET – not clear if this is an addition move on top of the recent regulations to clean up the web

    I Cannes | No Mercy No Malice | Scott Galloway | L2 – so much to read about here

    The Awful Truth Behind the Glamorous Facade of the Chinese Live-Streaming Host – not that different to modern record label practices or the Hollywood (and Hong Kong) studio system of the past

    Retailing

    Instagram and Nike Want to Show Fashionistas How to Shop – Bloomberg – really soon after the deal with Amazon

    Software

    US army spin-off GPU database bags $50m Series A funding • The Register – interesting use of GPU technology

    Technology

    China Is About to Bury Elon Musk in Batteries – Bloomberg – what’s this going to do to the price of lithium?

    Why the Future of Stuff Is Having More and Owning Less | Singularity Hub – but all the wealth will flow to the suppliers ie generation rent – its the first step on the way to serfdom

    How AI Boosts Industry Profits and Innovation by Purdy & Daugherty – Accenture white paper looking into the machine learning crystal ball and what it means for businesses (PDF)

    Azeem Azhar, entrepreneur | China will win AI race – China are also more focused on pragmatic usage of machine learning rather than flailing around like western startup eco-systems

    Crypto Miners Hated by VR Players as Graphic Cards Sold Out in China | NEWS.8BTC.COM – which gives you an idea of how much crypto currency mining happens in China now

    Apple is suspiciously interested in Fisker’s electric car – BGR – the Fisker Emotion appears to be a technical marvel, with a fast-charging system that enables the vehicle to charge up in just nine minutes. As we noted a few weeks back, the Emotion’s impressive battery system is based on supercapacitors using graphene as opposed to the more traditional lithium-ion batteries used in vehicles like the Tesla Model S

    Telecoms

    Bidders gear up for Li Ka-shing’s fixed-line network business | South China Morning Post – interesting no bid from China Telecom or any of the other Chinese SOEs. More telecom related posts here.

  • My decade of the iPhone

    A decade of the iPhone – last week has seen people looking back at the original launch. At the time, I was working an agency that looked after the Microsoft business. I used a Mac, a Nokia smartphone and a Samsung dual SIM feature phone.  At the time I had an Apple hosted email address for six years by then, so I was secure within the Apple eco-system. I accessed my email via IMAP on both my first generation MacBook Pro and the Nokia smartphone.

    Nokia had supported IMAP email for a few years by then. There were instant messaging clients available to download. Nokia did have cryptographic signatures on app downloads, but you found them on the web rather than within an app store.

    At the time BlackBerry was mostly a business device, though BlackBerry messaging seemed to take off in tandem with the rise of the iPhone.  The Palm Treo didn’t support IMAP in its native email application, instead it was reliant on a New Zealand based software developer and their paid for app SnapperMail.

    Microsoft had managed to make inroads with some business users, both Motorola and Samsung made reasonable looking devices based on Windows.

    The iPhone launch went off with the characteristic flair you would expect from Steve Jobs. It was a nice looking handset. It reminded me of Palm Vx that I used to have, but with built in wireless. Whilst the Vx had a stylus, I had used my fingers to press icons and write Graffiti to input text. It looked good, but it wasn’t the bolt from the blue in the way that others had experienced it.

    But in order to do work on the Palm, I had a foldable keyboard that sat in my pocket.

    By the time that the iPhone launched, I was using a developer version of the Nokia E90 which had an 800 pixel wide screen and a full keyboard in a compact package.

    Nokia e90 and 6085

    I had Wi-Fi, 3 and 3.5G cellular wireless. I could exchange files quickly with others over Bluetooth – at the time cellular data was expensive so being able to exchange things over Bluetooth was valuable. QuickOffice software allowed me to review work documents, a calendar that worked with my Mac and a contacts app.  There was GPS and Nokia Maps. I had a couple of days usage on a battery.

    By comparison when the iPhone launched it had:

    • GSM and GPRS only – which meant that wireless connectivity was slower
    • Wi-Fi
    • Bluetooth (but only for headphone support)
    • No battery hatch – which was unheard of in phones (but was common place in PDAs
    • No room for a SD, miniSD or microSD card – a step away from the norm. I knew people who migrated photos, message history and contacts from one phone to another via an SD card of some type

    I wasn’t Apple’s core target market at the time, Steve Jobs used to have a RAZR handset.

    As the software was demoed some things became apparent:

    • One of the key features at the time was visual voicemail. This allowed you to access your voicemails in a non-linear order. This required deep integration with the carrier. In the end this feature hasn’t been adopted by all carriers that support the iPhone. I still don’t enjoy that feature. I was atypical at the time as I had a SIM only contact with T-Mobile (now EE), but it was seemed obvious that Apple would pick carrier partners carefully
    • There was no software developer kit, instead Apple encouraged developers to build web services for the iPhone’s diminutive screen. Even on today’s networks that approach is hit-and-miss
    • The iPhone didn’t support Flash or Flash Lite. It is hard to explain how much web functionality and content was made in Adobe Flash format at the time. By comparison Nokia did support Flash, so you could enjoy a fuller web experience
    • The virtual keyboard was a poor substitute for Palm’s Graffiti or a hardware keyboard – which was the primary reason that BlackBerry users held out for such a long time
    • The device was expensive. I was used to paying for my device but wasn’t used to paying for one AND being tied into an expensive two year contract
    • Once iPhones hit the street, I was shocked at the battery life of the device. It wouldn’t last a work day, which was far inferior to Nokia

    I eventually moved to the Apple iPhone with the 3GS. Nokia’s achilles’ heel had been its address book which would brick when you synched over a 1,000 contacts into it.

    By comparison Apple’s contacts application just as well as Palm’s had before it. Despite the app store, many apps that I relied upon like CityTime, MetrO and the Opera browser took their time to get on the iPhone platform. Palm already was obviously in trouble, BlackBerry had never impressed me and Windows phone still wasn’t a serious option. Android would have required me to move my contacts, email and calendar over to Google – which wasn’t going to happen.

    SaveSave